This blog is based on a real life story. It happens to be mine! What is smartcastic? It's smart, sarcastic, fantastic, bombastic and several other words that end in "astic" all smooshed into one single, perfect word.

Thursday, March 9, 2017

2017 Be More: What's up with that?

New Year's Resolution: Two
Months In

It's hard to believe I
haven't blogged for two months - the time seems to have gone by so fast and so
slow at the same time. I left off with
my 2017 resolution: be more. Be more, it
turns out, means so many things.

Be more present.

We've become a society
encapsulated in technology. While I
don't describe myself as a person that can't be without technology, I do
realize that I spend way more time in the virtual world than the real world for
my liking. I can remember having
conversations with my daughter or husband that I didn't really listen to
because I was distracted. It hit me one
day that my lack of presence in the discussions could lead to no conversations
down the road and that is not a direction I wanted to take. In order to be more present, I put down the
phone or laptop or mute/turn off the television when they come into my space to
talk. They are WAY more important than
anything else and I wanted them to feel that from me.

Be more appreciative.

Really? How general is that one? For me, this means trying to consciously
appreciate what I have in life, like how awesome my friends and family are,
having a warm house to come home to and a reliable car to get me around. I can be a negative, pessimistic person and
when I start down that path, it gets wider and longer very quickly so I am
trying to be more aware of how good I have it.

Be more amazed.

Not sure if you've noticed
this but we live on a planet with tons of cool things to experience. The sky alone is an entire topic of
amazement. The clouds, or lack thereof,
the way the sun shines through pouring rain is an anomaly in itself that still
mystifies me every single time it happens.
Rainbows, double rainbows, sunsets that look like the world is on fire
and eerie sunrises through the fog.
That's just a small portion of the day sky, not even touching the night
sky. Then there's trees and animals and
insects and so on. Just get out there
and be amazed by this place, you won't be disappointed.

Be more kind to yourself.

There's a few components
being addressed here. Sometimes, I have
an internal, self-deflating inner voice that puts me down. I consciously work to knock that bitch down
and I've come a long way but still need to focus on the virtual smack down from
time to time. Another way I am trying to
be more kind to myself is to make healthier food choices and get more physical
activity in. Now, being kind to myself
does not involve taking away any foods - I am living one life and it won't be
one without cake, cookies, ice cream, cinnamon rolls and so on but it will be
one that involves more fruits and veggies!
Physical activity, for me, is simply doing more. I get up around 5:30 to get 30 minutes of
exercise in, usually walking or a weights/walking combination four or five days
a week. Getting this done in the morning
usually leads to higher energy levels through my day and a better attitude
because I've already started my day successfully. This is also time I get alone, to focus on me,
because the other people in the house are usually sleeping while I'm getting my
sweat on! I've been feeling tons better
since making these changes, which actually started well before the 2017
resolution.

That's what I've been up
to for the past two months. Let's see
what else I can do to be more this year.